Jay-Z

MAGNA CARTA HOLY GRAIL (Roc Nation)

6/20

It’s never a good sign when the pretext of a record can be summed up in 3 bullet points:  Jay-Z used to deal drugs in Brooklyn. Jay-Z now has lots of money. Jay-Z is married to Beyonce. It’s tough not to be frustrated by almost every aspect of the Magna Carta Holy Grail experience, from him allowing Justin Timberlake to sing like Bruno Mars on the opening track, to the fact that he effortlessly persuaded Billboard to change their age-old rules just so his partnership with Samsung could lead to another stat that he can rap about in a year or so. The overriding problem seeping through Magna Carta Holy Grail is a staggering lack of ideas that is thinly veiled by Jay-Z’s increasingly shallow and unconvincing bravado.

The album’s pop culture references, take the lyrics about Miley Cyrus’ twerking or Instagram for example, feel a little like the efforts made by those educational films that are tirelessly trying to be down with the youth. OK, so there’s some solid and exciting production here, such as Tom Ford’s simple, sleazy beat, but even Frank Ocean falls victim to the Magna Carta syndrome on Oceans, where his faultless vocal spot is wasted on a beat that would’ve felt at home on Eminem’s largely forgotten 2009 effort Relapse.

With Timberlake and Kanye constantly helping to reignite his name, Jay-Z has maintained a position at the top, and it can’t be denied that he can rap when inspired enough. But Magna Carta Holy Grail is the framework for a high-concept rap album which brings no ideas to the table and is transparently being used to uphold corporate relations, and therefore it makes the need for a shake up in the upper echelon of stadium status rappers feel more urgent than ever.

– – – – – – – – – –

Words: Duncan Harrison